​The release of Life Crisis: the Mindful Way coincides with the anniversary of my mother’s death (and yes, we know there are no coincidences!). Every book has a life of its own, a story of its own. My latest offering has involved a beautiful healing journey for me at the personal level.

My mother passed over eight years ago in circumstances that were traumatic for me. Until recently I was still carrying a huge amount of grief and guilt over her death. It was more than I could cope with so I had stored it away, at the back of the filing cabinet, under ‘Too Painful To Go There’.

Just a few weeks ago I was on retreat, a three-week retreat at Plum Village in France. The retreat ran from 1-21 June, my mother’s birthday being 11 June. I suspected some of that stored grief might come to visit me on her birthday. As it turned out, it came up a few days before. I spent a couple of hours drowning in it, overwhelmed by the torment that my relationship with my mother had become in the last few years of her life.

And then mindfulness performed its miracle. The depth of the practice is such at Plum Village that it had been really supporting my own practice. I remembered, in my drowning state, to ask myself ‘what is present right now in my experience?’. All the haunting memories and flashbacks were from eight years ago, some even longer than that. They were not happening right now at Plum Village. As I asked myself that question, I heard the birds singing, the same beautiful birdsong that had brought me such joy just a few hours earlier when I woke up in my tent.

I realised that nothing in my external circumstances had changed. I was still in a beautiful retreat centre, surrounded by nature and kind, loving people. In that instant all the pain, all the guilt, all the suffering melted away. For the first time in a very long time I’m able to feel love for my mother, simple, straightforward warmth and affection.

I’m a seasoned enough practitioner to know that in the future there may be more layers to heal but for now a huge burden has been lifted. I feel released from the grip of the past, from the grip of a relationship that carried so much complexity and wounding.

Of the many personal stories and anecdotes in Life Crisis: the Mindful Way I also share how my mindfulness practice helped me cope at the time of that traumatic bereavement.

I’m delighted to be sharing a FREE SAMPLE of Chapter 1. And, of course, we’ll have lots of goodies over the coming weeks. So keep an eye out for interviews, giveaways of free copies, my guest blog posts AND an exciting free online event! You’ll need to sign up to my mailing list if you haven’t already.

There’s also a fairly rare opportunity to come for a one-day retreat with me in August in Cheltenham, in the UK (see my last blog post). I don’t offer many of these and after my wonderful three weeks at Plum Village I’m very much looking forward to sharing that day with you.

My Mindfulness Journey with Dietary IntolerancesBecoming gluten, dairy, yeast and sugar-free has been a journey. Sometimes it has been uphill with a strong head wind in my face. Other times, I’ve been propelled forwards, the wind to my back.

It’s a personal journey, a unique journey, and I guess it has to be for each of us. Even now, there are times when I have to be careful, times when I know I could end up eating something that will make me feel unwell. There are times when I do. Luckily, fairly rare occasions. Nearly always when stress levels peak. My mindfulness practice has been a huge help.

Mindfulness has been shown to help cope with stress, leading to ‘a 58% reduction in anxiety levels and 40% reduction in stress’ according to the Mental Health Foundation. What the research figures don’t tell you is that being gluten-free or dairy-free or anything-free is all about kindness, self-compassion. The journey is essentially one of moving from self-harm to self-care. As our awareness grows, through our mindfulness practice, so too inevitably does our ability to be kind to ourselves, to our bodies.

A breakthrough came for me when I realised it wasn’t about depriving myself of anything but rather nourishing and nurturing myself with all sorts of delicious, healthy alternatives. If we feel at all deprived, the journey is simply an uphill struggle and we won’t achieve what we’re hoping to.

For every food I needed to cut out, in time I’ve worked out wonderful substitutes. From being someone who had never so much as baked a cake, I’ve gone to being known amongst friends for my various tasty breads, cakes and puddings, all totally gluten, dairy, sugar and yeast-free.

But it’s not about the recipes. It’s about bringing our awareness to the journey, to the kinds of situations that might trigger us, where we might slip up. And bringing in self-compassion if we do. A shared supper where there will probably be all manner of puddings laden with sugar, dairy and/or gluten is the kind of situation where I take along something I can eat.

It’s about acknowledging, with that same compassion, that, as is the case for me, I’m dealing with an addiction. It takes the tiniest bit of sugar for me to be right back there, hooked and craving. It won’t surprise you to hear that mindfulness is being used increasingly to help those struggling with addiction. Of the two books I’ve written for the Sheldon Press Mindfulness Series, one is on addiction recovery.

So the journey continues and I’m delighted to have this opportunity to support you on yours, to share what I’ve learnt, how mindfulness and kindfulness help. May the journey to healthy eating for us all be one where a warm breeze gently caresses our skin.

If you’re coping with food sensitivities or allergies, candida or diabetes, or need to avoid certain foods for health reasons, do join us. The day is suitable for mindfulness beginners as well as more experienced practitioners.

For bookings, please contact Cheltenham Holistic Health Centre (£50 for the day if booked by June 30; £60 for bookings after that date). Any queries do get in touch: catherine@catherine-g-lucas.com

Please bring on the day

a pillow and some sort of a throw, shawl or blanket as one of the mindfulness practices, the body scan, involves lying down.

by helping you to cut through the mental clutter and busyness that can get in the way of being fully present with your lover

by enabling you to relax into the intimacy, something that is often stressed in tantric sex

by helping you bring more conscious awareness to what’s happening, on every level

by helping you stay connected with your inner experience, especially on an energy level, while connecting at the same time with your beloved

by slowing things down and enhancing the senses

by helping you stay connected with and grounded in your body at times when wounding or conditioning triggered by the intimacy might take you out of and away from your body

by helping you become less oriented towards the ‘goal’ of orgasm, less focused on an end point and thus more in touch with the process, the journey.

Try this mindfulness practice:

If one or other of you is struggling with a busy mind or the distraction of the 101 things that need doing, have a go at a body scan together. One of you can take the lead and talk you through the body, from head to foot or vice versa. As you both direct your attention, your awareness to each area of the body in turn, you might like to focus more than usual on intimate parts, on all the sensations you’re both aware of as you slowly move around the body.

Talking through a body scan in this way will give you both an opportunity to connect with your bodies, your inner experience, letting go of the busyness of the day and relaxing into the moment. You are arriving more fully in the here and now, ready to be as fully present as you are able with your lover. Enjoy!

Look what we found in the hedgerow down our lane a few weeks ago. ‘Incubating new projects or ideas’, is one symbolic meaning of this find, according to Denise Linn’s book Signposts. Incubating new projects? Well, sort of, ... well, not really... Oh, but the Universe knew differently!

...half-term week in February proved to be rather eventful, in an inwardly kind of way. Swithin, my husband, was away, so I had earmarked the week as precious silent retreat time for myself. I unplugged the landline, turned off my mobile and put an automated Out of Office message on my email. I was good to go. And why does it not surprise me that during that week our same little lane was being dug up and was closed to all traffic! New electricity cables apparently...

Well, it wasn’t long before I found myself in something of an altered state. So many people have been struggling in one way or another. Dental emergencies, despair at the current political climate and everything in between. I was just tuning in to the potent energies around, to what was in the ‘field’. Wakeful nights and material pouring through me onto the page ensued – I soon cottoned on to keeping pad and pen by the bed.

Gradually the pieces of the jig-saw fell into place. My first encounter with fascism at the age of ten when living in Trieste on the border with what was then Yugoslavia. My parents got friendly with a couple, he American, she German. A concentration camp survivor. Some thirty years later she still looked as if she’d only just walked out of there; emaciated, an emotional and psychological wreck.

Studying politics and international relations at university. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, you name them, we studied them. A quarter of my Masters in European Studies was devoted to the study of terrorism and how to counter it effectively. I went on to lecture full-time for five years at a different university, on the history and politics of European integration. I taught about the incredible vision of the founding fathers, after two World Wars, of how to make war between France and Germany unimaginable in the future. I taught about EU policy, about collaborative anti-terrorism across the Union, amongst other things.

And then I turned my back on all of that and walked away from academia. From being immersed in the outer world I turned inwards, to find myself, to heal myself. I’ve never regretted that and I’ve never looked back but I have sometimes wondered what that was all about, that first chunk of my life that seemed to have no bearing on the second half, that seems so removed from my life today.

During half-term I started to see the link, I started to see how it was an essential piece of the jig-saw, like one of the four corner pieces. The Brexit vote had left me first shocked to my core and then broken-hearted. Only a few months later came the American election. With the inauguration of the new president something started to stir in me. I watched bits of the Sister Giant event in Washington in awe at Marianne Williamson. I’ve admired the way she brings her deep faith and spirituality to the political and socio-economic arena for a while. This time something within me responded to her call that it’s time to show up.

During half-term I realised that so many of us in the Mind Body Spirit world don’t engage with the political or the socio-economic or the environmental, not in any meaningful way. For my part, I’ve buried my head in the sand all these years partly because it has felt too painful, too overwhelming to take in the tragedies that are all around us at any one time. I’ve deliberately practiced a decades-long news-fast in order to protect myself from the negativity and fear that mainstream media peddles. At the same time I've avidly read Positive News and been inspired by all the encouraging signs of the new consciousness, the new paradigm that is emerging.

In 2012 I went on retreat for the whole of December and took only two books with me, a Barbara Marx Hubbard text and Andrew Harvey’s Hope, about Sacred Activism. As I read it I wept several times. I wrote an Ode to Avalokiteshvara, Avalokiteshvara who has a thousand eyes to see all the suffering of the world and a thousand arms and hands to relieve it, Avalokiteshvara who pierced my being all those years ago in Egypt. In spiritual emergency then, I experienced what felt like the entire suffering of humanity going back to the very beginning of time. And I experienced, coursing through my body, the infinite compassion of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Now I’m turning back to Harvey’s work to find the inner peace and strength, the courage and the boldness to step up and step out. Again. In the run up to my interview with Katie Mottram for the Emerging Proud campaign, yes, I am coming out of the closet. And it’s not the spiritual one.

An essential aspect of mindfulness and of moving from self-harm to self-care is self-compassion. We need to learn to be really kind to ourselves and I mean really kind. If we’re struggling or suffering in some way, we need to notice that, acknowledge it and then choose an act of self-kindness. Sometimes all it takes is to make yourself your favourite hot drink. It’s a simple act, but when done with the intention of being kind to ourselves, of soothing ourselves, it goes deep.

Sitting down with a hot drink is also a great opportunity to practice mindfulness. As Thich Nhat Hanh says: ‘The way we drink our tea can transform our lives if we truly devote our attention to it.’ So this Sunday, as part of our Mindful Sunday series, we’ll be drinking tea. If you need some pointers, listen to the audio I’ve prepared – the link is at the bottom of this post.

Sometimes we host Kirtan at our home. We absolutely love this Indian devotional music, the chanting and the whole thing of bringing our community together. Plus sharing warming, spicy chai afterwards. That will be my mindful cup of tea tomorrow...

And I’ll be posting our chai recipe on Facebook (a caffeine-free, dairy-free and sugar-free version - of course!). Another favourite tea in our household is fresh ginger, lemon juice and fennel seed. What’s your favourite homemade tea recipe? Do come on over to Facebook and share those too!

]]>Thu, 12 Jan 2017 13:19:26 GMThttp://www.catherine-g-lucas.com/blog/me-and-my-alcoholic-dadLaying the wreath on a rock by moonlight.

We're launching my new book with a series of Mindfulness Sundays... but first... I want to tell you a story... quite a personal story... about my dad...

If you had told me my latest book would complete my healing journey with my alcoholic father, I would have raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ But here I am, preparing for the launch in a few exciting days’ time with the clarity that I have no unfinished business with him. Considering how long ago he died, it’s only taken me 25 years!

The catharsis came for me in a dream. It was when I was checking over the final proofs for the book. In other words, at the very last stage of the whole process, the last time I would see the manuscript before it went to print. In the dream, I’m meeting my father as if at an airport. He’s coming through Arrivals with a bag slung over his shoulder. He looks well; fit and healthy - unlike his cancer ravaged, emaciated body when he died of alcohol-related throat cancer at the age of 49 - and relaxed. He puts his arms around me to hug me. I feel his love and I start to cry. Immediately the sobbing turns to howling, howling for all those years of misery he put me through. And that’s it, the dream ends. Howling that loudly, wakes me up. After, I have a sense that I have actually let go of all that misery in that dream bardo state.

A few weeks later, my husband and I were on holiday on the coast of Tuscany. It was the anniversary of my father’s birthday and, because of the dream, I wanted to mark it in some way, to honour him. But I wasn’t sure how. In the morning I wandered down to the beach on my own. As I stood leaning on the railings of the prom, looking out to sea, a few people were scattered along the beach and a small group were paddling. One of the women seemed to spot something in the water and wandered over to it. She then held it up for me to see; as if doing that just for my benefit. It was a wreath, a beautiful, simple homemade wreath, with pink roses and luscious greenery. A gift from the Universe for my beloved pa.

It’s the last piece of the healing jig-saw in my relationship with my father. The wounds of alcoholism can be healed. It’s no accident that I've dedicated Alcohol Recovery: The Mindful Way to ‘all those committed to healing the wounds of alcoholism’.

So, to celebrate the launch this Sunday, 15 January, join Sheldon Press and myself as we host the first in a series of Mindful Sundays for all you lovely readers. My gift to you! There’ll be freebies galore, starting with an audio of a brief introductory mindfulness practice, the Kiwi Kickstarter. (Hint - you'll need a kiwi - put it on your shopping list now!) And a sneak preview of the book, a free extract. Plus we’ll be giving FREE COPIES away over at GoodReads VERY soon...

Each Sunday I’ll have a new audio of a fun mindfulness practice for you, to help you prepare for the busy week ahead. Feel free to share all this with friends, family and colleagues on Twitter and FaceBook. And remember to check back herethis Sunday.

​The evening Amanda died, as I sat quietly by the fire, I felt her come to say goodbye. She was full of joy. A couple of nights before I had seen, in my mind’s eye, folds of beautiful, billowing, white silky satin. If felt as if Amanda was being lifted up by the angels.

Amanda knew the territory of spiritual emergency. Even in her passing she embodied it to the full, passing over at the time of year, Easter, when death and rebirth are at their most potent. She was one of the founding members of the UK Spiritual Crisis Network (SCN) and a cornerstone of the local Stroud group. Many of our meetings took place at her home.

She was always totally supportive of my work with the SCN. As a psychotherapist who had done a lot of group work, her perception and awareness of group dynamics were invaluable to me in the early days of setting the Network up.

It was Amanda and I who sat down around her dining table and wrote to various residential facilities who offer some, albeit limited, support for those going through spiritual emergency, asking whether we could include their details on the SCN website. The list mostly came from when Amanda was in crisis and she and her daughter had scoured the country for somewhere suitable that would be able to hold and support her through it. To this day there is hardly anywhere that can offer both the spiritual sanctuary and the level of intensive 24 hour care that someone in full-blown spiritual crisis so desperately needs.

I remember also the powerful ritual we did up in the woods when I needed help processing and moving on from a period of crisis. Amanda and the other Stroud SCN stalwarts did me proud that day. Then there were the times when I would lead us both through a much-needed mindfulness body scan; I would lie on a rug in front of her stove, with Amanda stretched out on the sofa and Rumi the cat joining in too.

She was unable to make it to the small gathering of close friends to celebrate the publication of my latest book. But the next day I found a huge bouquet of pink and cream roses on my doorstep. Her support of, and for, my work was total and unfailing. I can’t think of anybody else who I feel that level of unequivocal support from. She was an unspoken mentor.

Amanda and I shared an unusually symbiotic relationship. Our family backgrounds are very similar. Growing up with the same kind of wounds, we understood where the other had come from. It seemed we were in crisis at the same time more than once. Who knows whether we were both sensitive to the same planetary energies or picking up on each other in some way.

We held a deep respect for each other, for the places we had travelled to, for the gifts we brought back from those treacherous journeys.

Amanda’s death comes at a time of new birth, when we’re just launching the new Alliance for Revisioning Mental Health. I know she would have been proud of the impact we’re going to have on the mental health field. I’ll miss her support and her wisdom. She was no ordinary friend. She was a fellow traveller.

Amanda died, of lung failure, at a time when she was happy and fulfilled in her life. I saw her two weeks before, before her final illness, and it was lovely to see how happy she was; perhaps a perfect time to take one’s leave.​Amanda was a fighter and a survivor. She fought and won the battles that needed to be won, with her inner demons. Now, those battles won, she has been free to let go gracefully. Her work is done.

Well, it was an honour indeed to speak at the second CrazyWise conference in the Netherlands. The day was chaired by the impressive, cutting-edge Dutch psychiatrist Jim van Os who is revolutionising mental health care in Holland. He heads a user-led research centre and with Holland being a relatively small country, his senior role in psychiatry means he has influence too.

Jim wants to dismantle the national mental health institution and take mental health care right into the community. He has close family members who are experiencers. Watch his TedEx talk on YouTube and look out for him at the ISPS conference in Liverpool 2017.

First up was, of course, Phil Borges, director of the much-anticipated CrazyWise film. His audio-visual presentation with clips from the film gave us a sense of what is to come. We want more, but we’re still going to have to wait another year. They’re now editing and on schedule to hopefully release the film in December 2016.

As Phil was talking I recognised a line from my new book – if those supporting you don’t believe you can get well and don’t validate your experience, go and find somebody who does. Great to know it’s getting out there.

Other speakers were Will Hall who shared from the heart in a lovely, very engaging, no-PowerPoint-kind of way. He obviously gets the political dimension to creating change within the mental health field and seems very sound.

Will’s book ‘Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs’ is available in 14 languages, including Dutch. My first book, In Case of Spiritual Crisis, is also available in Dutch as Spirituele Crisis, which is jolly handy and was selling well, I’m pleased to say.

Sean Blackwell had brought a client with him to share her experience of his powerful 1-2-1 work using Holotropic Breathwork to move through spiritual emergence(y) and trauma. They showed a video featuring her art work to illustrate her journey. You can watch many more videos produced by Sean at his BipolarOrWakingUp YouTube channel.

Sandra Escher who has done amazing work over decades with Marius Romme, shared research and therapy for hearing voices, showing the clear link between trauma, abuse and hearing voices. It was clear from the questions from the floor that people are also interested in the more transpersonal or spiritual understanding of hearing voices, such as through spirit attachment.

In my presentation, I shared the learning from my personal experience and also touched on the new Alliance for Revisioning Mental Health (more about that here soon). I stressed that our approach is not to criticise what isn’t working, not to attack old school psychiatry, but to present therapeutic alternatives that are so compelling and appealing, so backed by research, that you simply can’t argue with them. This seemed to resonate with many people I spoke with during the day. My final words were: ‘I believe we can change the face of mental health, we can change the face of psychiatry, we absolutely can, and together we must’.

In the final Q&A, Jim van Os was very clear that psychiatrists are now really starting to question the over-reliance and long-term use of medication. This must, at least in part, be thanks to the thorough research Robert Whitaker has done. And I was heartened to hear from a psychiatrist in the audience that he, and presumably others too, now feel ethically duty-bound to offer therapeutic alternatives; he cannot morally justify relying solely on psychiatric drugs any longer, he said.

This really confirms for me what I shared in my presentation: I feel more hopeful than ever that we can create real change within mental health care. Are you feeling this too? If you were at the conference do share your impressions of the day... oh, and check out the CrazyWise Rotterdam FB page...

If you’re looking for a more holistic take on depression, you’ve come to the right place. Transpersonal psychology talks more in terms of a dark night of the soul. It is one of the most perilous forms psychospiritual crisis can take because it carries the risk of suicide. Tragically, anyone going through spiritual emergence(y) can end up taking their own life if the spiritual aspect of their breakdown isn’t recognised, valued and supported. When someone is so vulnerable, pathologising their experience as nothing but illness can push them even deeper into despair. It can literally prove fatal.This is why so many of us are working to raise awareness and understanding of the highly complex relationship between mental health and spirituality. It is why charities around the world like the UK Spiritual Crisis Network (SCN) and the Canadian Spiritual Emergence Service (SES) exist – to offer support to those who need it. Our message is simple: please reach out for support; you are not alone; many others have been through these crises and come out the other side. Psychospiritual crisis can be an excruciating process to go through – I know, I’ve been through it. But with the right support it can lead to considerable healing and growth.There are lots of free resources on the UK SCN website, the Canadian SES, the Australian and American Spiritual Emergence Networks and on my website here. There are also online communities like the Shades of Awakening FB page and Kimberley Jones’ community and some excellent books by authors such as Christina and Stanislav Grof, Emma Bragdon, consultant psychiatrist Dr Russell Razzaque (Breaking Down is Waking Up) and myself (In Case of Spiritual Emergency: Moving Successfully Through Your Awakening). Memoirs of those who’ve come through it include Katie Mottram’s Mend the Gap. Upcoming there is also a powerful documentary film, CrazyWiseand a novel by Emma Goude, My Beautiful Psychosis.Such intense transformational crises are far more common than people realise. When understood, validated and supported they offer us the potential to move beyond our wounding, beyond our limited conception of ourselves.Please help those in crisis find the support they need; please share this post. Together we can make a difference! Thank you.